.. contents:: Introduction ============ Matrix is an ambitious new ecosystem for open federated Instant Messaging and VoIP. The basics you need to know to get up and running are: - Everything in Matrix happens in a room. Rooms are distributed and do not exist on any single server. Rooms can be located using convenience aliases like ``#matrix:matrix.org`` or ``#test:localhost:8448``. - Matrix user IDs look like ``@matthew:matrix.org`` (although in the future you will normally refer to yourself and others using a third party identifier (3PID): email address, phone number, etc rather than manipulating Matrix user IDs) The overall architecture is:: client <----> homeserver <=====================> homeserver <----> client https://somewhere.org/_matrix https://elsewhere.net/_matrix ``#matrix:matrix.org`` is the official support room for Matrix, and can be accessed by any client from https://matrix.org/blog/try-matrix-now or via IRC bridge at irc://irc.freenode.net/matrix. Synapse is currently in rapid development, but as of version 0.5 we believe it is sufficiently stable to be run as an internet-facing service for real usage! About Matrix ============ Matrix specifies a set of pragmatic RESTful HTTP JSON APIs as an open standard, which handle: - Creating and managing fully distributed chat rooms with no single points of control or failure - Eventually-consistent cryptographically secure synchronisation of room state across a global open network of federated servers and services - Sending and receiving extensible messages in a room with (optional) end-to-end encryption[1] - Inviting, joining, leaving, kicking, banning room members - Managing user accounts (registration, login, logout) - Using 3rd Party IDs (3PIDs) such as email addresses, phone numbers, Facebook accounts to authenticate, identify and discover users on Matrix. - Placing 1:1 VoIP and Video calls These APIs are intended to be implemented on a wide range of servers, services and clients, letting developers build messaging and VoIP functionality on top of the entirely open Matrix ecosystem rather than using closed or proprietary solutions. The hope is for Matrix to act as the building blocks for a new generation of fully open and interoperable messaging and VoIP apps for the internet. Synapse is a reference "homeserver" implementation of Matrix from the core development team at matrix.org, written in Python/Twisted for clarity and simplicity. It is intended to showcase the concept of Matrix and let folks see the spec in the context of a codebase and let you run your own homeserver and generally help bootstrap the ecosystem. In Matrix, every user runs one or more Matrix clients, which connect through to a Matrix homeserver. The homeserver stores all their personal chat history and user account information - much as a mail client connects through to an IMAP/SMTP server. Just like email, you can either run your own Matrix homeserver and control and own your own communications and history or use one hosted by someone else (e.g. matrix.org) - there is no single point of control or mandatory service provider in Matrix, unlike WhatsApp, Facebook, Hangouts, etc. Synapse ships with two basic demo Matrix clients: webclient (a basic group chat web client demo implemented in AngularJS) and cmdclient (a basic Python command line utility which lets you easily see what the JSON APIs are up to). Meanwhile, iOS and Android SDKs and clients are available from: - https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-ios-sdk - https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-ios-kit - https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-ios-console - https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-android-sdk We'd like to invite you to join #matrix:matrix.org (via https://matrix.org/blog/try-matrix-now), run a homeserver, take a look at the Matrix spec at https://matrix.org/docs/spec and API docs at https://matrix.org/docs/api, experiment with the APIs and the demo clients, and report any bugs via https://matrix.org/jira. Thanks for using Matrix! [1] End-to-end encryption is currently in development - see https://matrix.org/git/olm Synapse Installation ==================== Synapse is the reference python/twisted Matrix homeserver implementation. System requirements: - POSIX-compliant system (tested on Linux & OS X) - Python 2.7 - At least 1GB of free RAM if you want to join large public rooms like #matrix:matrix.org Synapse is written in python but some of the libraries is uses are written in C. So before we can install synapse itself we need a working C compiler and the header files for python C extensions. Installing prerequisites on Ubuntu or Debian:: sudo apt-get install build-essential python2.7-dev libffi-dev \ python-pip python-setuptools sqlite3 \ libssl-dev python-virtualenv libjpeg-dev libxslt1-dev Installing prerequisites on ArchLinux:: sudo pacman -S base-devel python2 python-pip \ python-setuptools python-virtualenv sqlite3 Installing prerequisites on CentOS 7:: sudo yum install libtiff-devel libjpeg-devel libzip-devel freetype-devel \ lcms2-devel libwebp-devel tcl-devel tk-devel \ python-virtualenv libffi-devel openssl-devel sudo yum groupinstall "Development Tools" Installing prerequisites on Mac OS X:: xcode-select --install sudo easy_install pip sudo pip install virtualenv Installing prerequisites on Raspbian:: sudo apt-get install build-essential python2.7-dev libffi-dev \ python-pip python-setuptools sqlite3 \ libssl-dev python-virtualenv libjpeg-dev sudo pip install --upgrade pip sudo pip install --upgrade ndg-httpsclient sudo pip install --upgrade virtualenv Installing prerequisites on openSUSE:: sudo zypper in -t pattern devel_basis sudo zypper in python-pip python-setuptools sqlite3 python-virtualenv \ python-devel libffi-devel libopenssl-devel libjpeg62-devel To install the synapse homeserver run:: virtualenv -p python2.7 ~/.synapse source ~/.synapse/bin/activate pip install --upgrade setuptools pip install https://github.com/matrix-org/synapse/tarball/master This installs synapse, along with the libraries it uses, into a virtual environment under ``~/.synapse``. Feel free to pick a different directory if you prefer. In case of problems, please see the _Troubleshooting section below. Alternatively, Silvio Fricke has contributed a Dockerfile to automate the above in Docker at https://registry.hub.docker.com/u/silviof/docker-matrix/. Also, Martin Giess has created an auto-deployment process with vagrant/ansible, tested with VirtualBox/AWS/DigitalOcean - see https://github.com/EMnify/matrix-synapse-auto-deploy for details. To set up your homeserver, run (in your virtualenv, as before):: cd ~/.synapse python -m synapse.app.homeserver \ --server-name machine.my.domain.name \ --config-path homeserver.yaml \ --generate-config \ --report-stats=[yes|no] ...substituting your host and domain name as appropriate. This will generate you a config file that you can then customise, but it will also generate a set of keys for you. These keys will allow your Home Server to identify itself to other Home Servers, so don't lose or delete them. It would be wise to back them up somewhere safe. If, for whatever reason, you do need to change your Home Server's keys, you may find that other Home Servers have the old key cached. If you update the signing key, you should change the name of the key in the .signing.key file (the second word) to something different. By default, registration of new users is disabled. You can either enable registration in the config by specifying ``enable_registration: true`` (it is then recommended to also set up CAPTCHA - see ``_), or you can use the command line to register new users:: $ source ~/.synapse/bin/activate $ synctl start # if not already running $ register_new_matrix_user -c homeserver.yaml https://localhost:8448 New user localpart: erikj Password: Confirm password: Success! For reliable VoIP calls to be routed via this homeserver, you MUST configure a TURN server. See docs/turn-howto.rst for details. Running Synapse =============== To actually run your new homeserver, pick a working directory for Synapse to run (e.g. ``~/.synapse``), and:: cd ~/.synapse source ./bin/activate synctl start Security Note ============= Matrix serves raw user generated data in some APIs - specifically the content repository endpoints: http://matrix.org/docs/spec/client_server/r0.2.0.html#get-matrix-media-r0-download-servername-mediaid Whilst we have tried to mitigate against possible XSS attacks (e.g. https://github.com/matrix-org/synapse/pull/1021) we recommend running matrix homeservers on a dedicated domain name, to limit any malicious user generated content served to web browsers a matrix API from being able to attack webapps hosted on the same domain. This is particularly true of sharing a matrix webclient and server on the same domain. See https://github.com/vector-im/vector-web/issues/1977 and https://developer.github.com/changes/2014-04-25-user-content-security for more details. Using PostgreSQL ================ As of Synapse 0.9, `PostgreSQL `_ is supported as an alternative to the `SQLite `_ database that Synapse has traditionally used for convenience and simplicity. The advantages of Postgres include: * significant performance improvements due to the superior threading and caching model, smarter query optimiser * allowing the DB to be run on separate hardware * allowing basic active/backup high-availability with a "hot spare" synapse pointing at the same DB master, as well as enabling DB replication in synapse itself. For information on how to install and use PostgreSQL, please see `docs/postgres.rst `_. Platform Specific Instructions ============================== Debian ------ Matrix provides official Debian packages via apt from http://matrix.org/packages/debian/. Note that these packages do not include a client - choose one from https://matrix.org/blog/try-matrix-now/ (or build your own with one of our SDKs :) Fedora ------ Oleg Girko provides Fedora RPMs at https://obs.infoserver.lv/project/monitor/matrix-synapse ArchLinux --------- The quickest way to get up and running with ArchLinux is probably with Ivan Shapovalov's AUR package from https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/matrix-synapse/, which should pull in all the necessary dependencies. Alternatively, to install using pip a few changes may be needed as ArchLinux defaults to python 3, but synapse currently assumes python 2.7 by default: pip may be outdated (6.0.7-1 and needs to be upgraded to 6.0.8-1 ):: sudo pip2.7 install --upgrade pip You also may need to explicitly specify python 2.7 again during the install request:: pip2.7 install https://github.com/matrix-org/synapse/tarball/master If you encounter an error with lib bcrypt causing an Wrong ELF Class: ELFCLASS32 (x64 Systems), you may need to reinstall py-bcrypt to correctly compile it under the right architecture. (This should not be needed if installing under virtualenv):: sudo pip2.7 uninstall py-bcrypt sudo pip2.7 install py-bcrypt During setup of Synapse you need to call python2.7 directly again:: cd ~/.synapse python2.7 -m synapse.app.homeserver \ --server-name machine.my.domain.name \ --config-path homeserver.yaml \ --generate-config ...substituting your host and domain name as appropriate. FreeBSD ------- Synapse can be installed via FreeBSD Ports or Packages contributed by Brendan Molloy from: - Ports: ``cd /usr/ports/net/py-matrix-synapse && make install clean`` - Packages: ``pkg install py27-matrix-synapse`` NixOS ----- Robin Lambertz has packaged Synapse for NixOS at: https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/blob/master/nixos/modules/services/misc/matrix-synapse.nix Windows Install --------------- Synapse can be installed on Cygwin. It requires the following Cygwin packages: - gcc - git - libffi-devel - openssl (and openssl-devel, python-openssl) - python - python-setuptools The content repository requires additional packages and will be unable to process uploads without them: - libjpeg8 - libjpeg8-devel - zlib If you choose to install Synapse without these packages, you will need to reinstall ``pillow`` for changes to be applied, e.g. ``pip uninstall pillow`` ``pip install pillow --user`` Troubleshooting: - You may need to upgrade ``setuptools`` to get this to work correctly: ``pip install setuptools --upgrade``. - You may encounter errors indicating that ``ffi.h`` is missing, even with ``libffi-devel`` installed. If you do, copy the ``.h`` files: ``cp /usr/lib/libffi-3.0.13/include/*.h /usr/include`` - You may need to install libsodium from source in order to install PyNacl. If you do, you may need to create a symlink to ``libsodium.a`` so ``ld`` can find it: ``ln -s /usr/local/lib/libsodium.a /usr/lib/libsodium.a`` Troubleshooting =============== Troubleshooting Installation ---------------------------- Synapse requires pip 1.7 or later, so if your OS provides too old a version you may need to manually upgrade it:: sudo pip install --upgrade pip Installing may fail with ``Could not find any downloads that satisfy the requirement pymacaroons-pynacl (from matrix-synapse==0.12.0)``. You can fix this by manually upgrading pip and virtualenv:: sudo pip install --upgrade virtualenv You can next rerun ``virtualenv -p python2.7 synapse`` to update the virtual env. Installing may fail during installing virtualenv with ``InsecurePlatformWarning: A true SSLContext object is not available. This prevents urllib3 from configuring SSL appropriately and may cause certain SSL connections to fail. For more information, see https://urllib3.readthedocs.org/en/latest/security.html#insecureplatformwarning.`` You can fix this by manually installing ndg-httpsclient:: pip install --upgrade ndg-httpsclient Installing may fail with ``mock requires setuptools>=17.1. Aborting installation``. You can fix this by upgrading setuptools:: pip install --upgrade setuptools If pip crashes mid-installation for reason (e.g. lost terminal), pip may refuse to run until you remove the temporary installation directory it created. To reset the installation:: rm -rf /tmp/pip_install_matrix pip seems to leak *lots* of memory during installation. For instance, a Linux host with 512MB of RAM may run out of memory whilst installing Twisted. If this happens, you will have to individually install the dependencies which are failing, e.g.:: pip install twisted On OS X, if you encounter clang: error: unknown argument: '-mno-fused-madd' you will need to export CFLAGS=-Qunused-arguments. Troubleshooting Running ----------------------- If synapse fails with ``missing "sodium.h"`` crypto errors, you may need to manually upgrade PyNaCL, as synapse uses NaCl (http://nacl.cr.yp.to/) for encryption and digital signatures. Unfortunately PyNACL currently has a few issues (https://github.com/pyca/pynacl/issues/53) and (https://github.com/pyca/pynacl/issues/79) that mean it may not install correctly, causing all tests to fail with errors about missing "sodium.h". To fix try re-installing from PyPI or directly from (https://github.com/pyca/pynacl):: # Install from PyPI pip install --user --upgrade --force pynacl # Install from github pip install --user https://github.com/pyca/pynacl/tarball/master ArchLinux ~~~~~~~~~ If running `$ synctl start` fails with 'returned non-zero exit status 1', you will need to explicitly call Python2.7 - either running as:: python2.7 -m synapse.app.homeserver --daemonize -c homeserver.yaml ...or by editing synctl with the correct python executable. Synapse Development =================== To check out a synapse for development, clone the git repo into a working directory of your choice:: git clone https://github.com/matrix-org/synapse.git cd synapse Synapse has a number of external dependencies, that are easiest to install using pip and a virtualenv:: virtualenv env source env/bin/activate python synapse/python_dependencies.py | xargs -n1 pip install pip install setuptools_trial mock This will run a process of downloading and installing all the needed dependencies into a virtual env. Once this is done, you may wish to run Synapse's unit tests, to check that everything is installed as it should be:: python setup.py test This should end with a 'PASSED' result:: Ran 143 tests in 0.601s PASSED (successes=143) Upgrading an existing Synapse ============================= The instructions for upgrading synapse are in `UPGRADE.rst`_. Please check these instructions as upgrading may require extra steps for some versions of synapse. .. _UPGRADE.rst: UPGRADE.rst Setting up Federation ===================== In order for other homeservers to send messages to your server, it will need to be publicly visible on the internet, and they will need to know its host name. You have two choices here, which will influence the form of your Matrix user IDs: 1) Use the machine's own hostname as available on public DNS in the form of its A records. This is easier to set up initially, perhaps for testing, but lacks the flexibility of SRV. 2) Set up a SRV record for your domain name. This requires you create a SRV record in DNS, but gives the flexibility to run the server on your own choice of TCP port, on a machine that might not be the same name as the domain name. For the first form, simply pass the required hostname (of the machine) as the --server-name parameter:: python -m synapse.app.homeserver \ --server-name machine.my.domain.name \ --config-path homeserver.yaml \ --generate-config python -m synapse.app.homeserver --config-path homeserver.yaml Alternatively, you can run ``synctl start`` to guide you through the process. For the second form, first create your SRV record and publish it in DNS. This needs to be named _matrix._tcp.YOURDOMAIN, and point at at least one hostname and port where the server is running. (At the current time synapse does not support clustering multiple servers into a single logical homeserver). The DNS record would then look something like:: $ dig -t srv _matrix._tcp.machine.my.domain.name _matrix._tcp IN SRV 10 0 8448 machine.my.domain.name. At this point, you should then run the homeserver with the hostname of this SRV record, as that is the name other machines will expect it to have:: python -m synapse.app.homeserver \ --server-name YOURDOMAIN \ --config-path homeserver.yaml \ --generate-config python -m synapse.app.homeserver --config-path homeserver.yaml If you've already generated the config file, you need to edit the "server_name" in you ```homeserver.yaml``` file. If you've already started Synapse and a database has been created, you will have to recreate the database. You may additionally want to pass one or more "-v" options, in order to increase the verbosity of logging output; at least for initial testing. Running a Demo Federation of Synapses ------------------------------------- If you want to get up and running quickly with a trio of homeservers in a private federation (``localhost:8080``, ``localhost:8081`` and ``localhost:8082``) which you can then access through the webclient running at http://localhost:8080. Simply run:: demo/start.sh This is mainly useful just for development purposes. Running The Demo Web Client =========================== The homeserver runs a web client by default at https://localhost:8448/. If this is the first time you have used the client from that browser (it uses HTML5 local storage to remember its config), you will need to log in to your account. If you don't yet have an account, because you've just started the homeserver for the first time, then you'll need to register one. Registering A New Account ------------------------- Your new user name will be formed partly from the hostname your server is running as, and partly from a localpart you specify when you create the account. Your name will take the form of:: @localpart:my.domain.here (pronounced "at localpart on my dot domain dot here") Specify your desired localpart in the topmost box of the "Register for an account" form, and click the "Register" button. Hostnames can contain ports if required due to lack of SRV records (e.g. @matthew:localhost:8448 on an internal synapse sandbox running on localhost). If registration fails, you may need to enable it in the homeserver (see `Synapse Installation`_ above) Logging In To An Existing Account --------------------------------- Just enter the ``@localpart:my.domain.here`` Matrix user ID and password into the form and click the Login button. Identity Servers ================ The job of authenticating 3PIDs and tracking which 3PIDs are associated with a given Matrix user is very security-sensitive, as there is obvious risk of spam if it is too easy to sign up for Matrix accounts or harvest 3PID data. Meanwhile the job of publishing the end-to-end encryption public keys for Matrix users is also very security-sensitive for similar reasons. Therefore the role of managing trusted identity in the Matrix ecosystem is farmed out to a cluster of known trusted ecosystem partners, who run 'Matrix Identity Servers' such as ``sydent``, whose role is purely to authenticate and track 3PID logins and publish end-user public keys. It's currently early days for identity servers as Matrix is not yet using 3PIDs as the primary means of identity and E2E encryption is not complete. As such, we are running a single identity server (https://matrix.org) at the current time. URL Previews ============ Synapse 0.15.0 introduces an experimental new API for previewing URLs at /_matrix/media/r0/preview_url. This is disabled by default. To turn it on you must enable the `url_preview_enabled: True` config parameter and explicitly specify the IP ranges that Synapse is not allowed to spider for previewing in the `url_preview_ip_range_blacklist` configuration parameter. This is critical from a security perspective to stop arbitrary Matrix users spidering 'internal' URLs on your network. At the very least we recommend that your loopback and RFC1918 IP addresses are blacklisted. This also requires the optional lxml and netaddr python dependencies to be installed. Password reset ============== If a user has registered an email address to their account using an identity server, they can request a password-reset token via clients such as Vector. A manual password reset can be done via direct database access as follows. First calculate the hash of the new password: $ source ~/.synapse/bin/activate $ ./scripts/hash_password Password: Confirm password: $2a$12$xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Then update the `users` table in the database: UPDATE users SET password_hash='$2a$12$xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx' WHERE name='@test:test.com'; Where's the spec?! ================== The source of the matrix spec lives at https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-doc. A recent HTML snapshot of this lives at http://matrix.org/docs/spec Building Internal API Documentation =================================== Before building internal API documentation install sphinx and sphinxcontrib-napoleon:: pip install sphinx pip install sphinxcontrib-napoleon Building internal API documentation:: python setup.py build_sphinx Help!! Synapse eats all my RAM! =============================== Synapse's architecture is quite RAM hungry currently - we deliberately cache a lot of recent room data and metadata in RAM in order to speed up common requests. We'll improve this in future, but for now the easiest way to either reduce the RAM usage (at the risk of slowing things down) is to set the almost-undocumented ``SYNAPSE_CACHE_FACTOR`` environment variable. Roughly speaking, a SYNAPSE_CACHE_FACTOR of 1.0 will max out at around 3-4GB of resident memory - this is what we currently run the matrix.org on. The default setting is currently 0.1, which is probably around a ~700MB footprint. You can dial it down further to 0.02 if desired, which targets roughly ~512MB. Conversely you can dial it up if you need performance for lots of users and have a box with a lot of RAM.